The Zeal Of Jesus for the Temple Of God

Well, good morning to you. Open your Bibles to John chapter 2, please. To the Gospel of John, chapter 2. If you have a few Bible, that's page 887. Let's read the text and we'll go to the Lord in prayer. John chapter 2, verses 13 to 22.

This is the word of the Lord. the Passover of the Jews was at hand and Jesus went up to Jerusalem in the temple he found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there and making a whip of cords he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables and he told those who sold the pigeons Take these things away. Do not make my father's house a house of trade. And his disciples remembered that it was written, Zeal for your house will consume me.

So the Jews said to him, What sign do you show us for doing these things? And Jesus answered them, Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews then said, It has taken 46 years to build this temple, and will you raise it up in three days? but he was speaking about the temple of his body. When therefore he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he had said this, and they believed the scriptures and the word that Jesus had spoken.

Let us pray to our God. Oh, God in heaven, here is your word opened up to us. And here we have our sinful flesh and weakness to hear. I pray, God, that you would see us in our weakness and our need, and you would be so kind according to your promise. to send your spirit to cause us to hear your word and respond appropriately. Lord, the only way that's possible is because of the great work of Jesus Christ, our Savior.

And so it's to him we look now. We want to know him and we want to follow him. For those who do not know you and have no taste for you, may you even send your spirit to them to cause them for their affections and their desires to change and to see that their only hope is to follow Jesus Christ, the Lord. And so, God, may he be magnified and glorified even in the speaking, the preaching, and the listening now.

And may we take these truths, and may we live accordingly, day by day, by the mercies and grace of the powerful Holy Spirit that you've sent to the world. Thank you for this time. May you be honored in it. In Jesus' name, amen. Well, I'm convinced that one of the best toppings you can put on anything are chopped up onions. I love to put them on everything.

I like to put them on my nachos, my pizza. It's literally good on everything. If it was socially acceptable, I would put it upon my cereal as well, but my wife won't let me. But I remember there was plenty of times, there's plenty of times when you're chopping up the onions to put on whatever food you may have before you, and you all know you cut into it, and the fumes just attack your face, and you have tears flowing down.

You're burning. It's stinging. but what's fascinating is I rejoice when that's happening because that means the onions are going to taste all the greater and the sweeter and it's going to be more potent. So it's a fascinating thing with onions, right? That the more they hurt you, the greater the anticipation that they are going to taste very, very good.

And stay with me here, but this is how John writes his gospel. You've got the outside with its obvious meaning. You've got the outside of his teaching with its obvious meaning. But then you have a deeper layer of the teaching, a deeper layer, a layer that cuts deeper to the meaning of what he's talking about that will burn your soul as you believe upon it.

And ultimately, it will taste all the better. And we saw this with how Jesus turned the water into wine, right? You have the narrative of itself, the onion. But then as you cut into the layers of that narrative, you realize that this is teaching something very specific about the kingdom of Christ and about me as an individual and about how Jesus provides goodness and gladness and blessing as I taste of his wine and his blessings.

And we'll see this throughout the Gospel of John. In fact, in the water and wine, John didn't actually lay out the deeper layer explicitly. We kind of had to do it ourselves. But we'll see a common theme in the Gospel of John is for there to be a typical thing on the outside that we see, that then John then tears back the peeling or the layers, and all of a sudden the aroma of the deeper teaching comes out, smacks us in our face, and produces life in our souls.

Just as an example, real quick, we'll see chapter 3 of John, Nicodemus. Remember what he says? How can a man enter his mother's womb twice? How can you be born again when Jesus says you must be born again? Or think about chapter 4 with the Samaritan woman at the well saying, Yeah, give me this water always so I don't have to keep on getting water out of this well.

While Jesus is saying, I am the living water. Or consider chapter 6 as the crowds are wanting to follow Jesus because he provided a great miraculous work of physical food. And he says, I am the living bread from heaven. And this morning we going to see that the outside and the layer that peels out and strikes our souls we going to see that as Jesus cleanses the temple We going to see how he cleanses the temple and then we see how he tears back the layer that will sting and burn our own souls as we respond to him in belief.

So let's look at that, at the first layer here, with Jesus cleansing the temple. Look at chapter 2, verses 12 and 13, and we'll call this part expectations. Expectations. So look at 12. I know we're going a little before, but that's fine. After this, he went down, that is Jesus, to Capernaum with his mother and his brothers and his disciples, and they stayed there for a few days.

The Passover of the Jews was at hand, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. I'm calling this expectations, high expectations at that. It is the Passover. Jesus has just done the miracle of turning water into wine. He goes to Capernaum, which is the north of Galilee, about 100 miles away from Jerusalem. and it is Passover season. And Passover, that feast of the Jews, was one of the biggest feasts of the year.

It was one of those mandatory feasts that all adult men had to go to. And it was a solemn yet joyful worship from the Jews as the Israelites praised God for the start of their nation by miraculous means. God saved the Meraxli from slavery in Egypt, and he Meraxli brings them into the promised land and Passover really celebrated with a solemn feel that great work of God.

And it was a time, also Passover, to anticipate a future deliverance that the Jews were all too aware that they needed as well. So Jesus would have traveled with a large caravan from Capernaum, which again is like 100 miles north of Jerusalem where the temple is at. and in Capernaum in the north was about a few hundred feet below sea level and he would have traveled a hundred miles south to the temple which was a couple thousand feet above sea level and he would have made this trip with a very large or a large caravan and as the city with a big group of Jews anticipating this great feast as the city came in view as they're traveling for a few days, as the city of Jerusalem would come into view, they would sing Psalms 120 to 134, which are the songs of ascents. As they went up the mountain to Jerusalem, they would sing these Psalms with joy as they saw the city of Jerusalem, and they would anticipate coming into it and worshiping at this feast.

Jesus would have walked through the residential areas of Jerusalem, flooded with pilgrims. You've got to imagine, Jerusalem had a ton of pilgrims. It was a mandatory feast to go to. Some estimations say that Jerusalem would swell to six times its normal population. There would be a ton of people running in the residential areas, kids playing and laughing in the streets.

There would be a lot of commotion, a good commotion, a lot of activity going on as they anticipated the coming week of Passover. Jesus would have walked through the extremely busy marketplace as well, swollen with people trying to get provisions for their family as they stayed there for the week, where people bartered and haggled to try to save or try to gain an extra buck. This would be a great time of expectations for worshipers of Yahweh, especially for Jesus, who was the perfect worshiper of Yahweh.

Imagine yourself on your best day. Maybe today was your best day. where you're like, I cannot wait to go to church on the Lord's Day and worship with the saints and hear the word and sing and pray. Imagine your best day where it's just really sensitive soul to that. And then imagine Jesus always had something that was way better than that. Jesus expected, had great expectations.

He anticipated this great day, this great time of the year where the people of God would come together and celebrate the good things that God has done for them. But sadly, as we see in the text, expectations did not lead to reality. However, let's look at reality. Look at verse 14 of chapter 2. Verse 14. In the temple, Jesus found those who were selling oxen and sheep and pigeons and the money changers sitting there.

Expectations of 12 and 13. And then he gets to the temple and he found those selling oxen, sheep, pigeons, and the money changers sitting there. You know, Jesus would have approached the temple wall. He would approach the temple itself. The temple wall would be there. And on the other side of that wall would be the start of the temple with the biggest court.

There's different courts of the temple. The biggest one, the entry one, would be the court of the Gentiles. It was the biggest of the courts and the only place where Gentiles were allowed to be in the temple to peer into the true worship and to the true God. And when Jesus walks through those gates, desiring to worship the true God, on this great Passover week, what Jesus saw in this large court was a continuation of the marketplace he would have left behind earlier. only this was a religious arm or section of the marketplace here the animals being sold were the ones that the law prescribed so we see it's like dressed up with lawfulness right well we're simply providing animals that people need to sacrifice in the temple and very true the law allowed in deuteronomy 14 25 the law allowed people who were traveling long distances to bring money instead of an animal so they'd have to lug it around everywhere and they could buy an animal there.

So the law is saying hey we provide the animals right there in the court of the Gentiles for them to buy The money changers were there too And the money changers what they did is they exchanged Gentile currency to Jewish currency Because you cannot use Gentile currency in the temple. So hey, they need the proper currency. We will provide that at a higher cost so they can use their money to purchase the animals and to pay the yearly temple tax.

And so really what we see here is an extension of the marketplace, but it's shrouded in, hey, this is lawful behavior. This is according to the law of God. They need these things. There are things that dress themselves up as lawful, but really it's just an excuse, and hear this, to worship money and take over the pure worship of God in the temple. imagine being a perfect worshiper of God like Jesus with perfect expectations and anticipation with perfect motivations only to see the marketplace has taken over the temple of God imagine coming into the Lord's day worship excited to worship Christ the king only to see the pastors have instituted all these things to get in the way of that instead.

I remember this is the season of open houses. And I remember when I was a kid, probably a little older than I should have been, but I remember my parents telling me we're going to go to an open house. And I had no idea what that was. And I thought the house is open. And I was like, man, every house I've ever seen has walls and a roof. This sucker is going to be open.

I was like, this is going to be pretty neat. I was pretty jazzed up, excited. Imagine my disappointment when I got there and it's just a house and we're not even in there. We're out in the yard. I didn't realize until about 20 years later an open house simply means everyone's invited to come, whatever it means. I need to be honest with you, I still don't know what it means.

Or Euchre is another good illustration. For some reason, Euchre is one of those games. I like to play Euchre. I like to compete and I like to win at Euchre. And for some reason, it's one of those games where people aren't good at it and they think it's a time to gab and talk and have a talk show. I don't understand.

We're playing Euchre. We're not having a talk show right now. And so I get invited to play Euchre and instead I've been invited to talk and talk and talk. But imagine you have this anticipation for something wonderful and you go there and it's been changed into something dramatically different. You can feel the anger in Jesus' spirit. That I'm here to worship the true God, and instead the marketplace has taken over.

And so what does Jesus do? Well, he acts, doesn't he? He acts. Look at verse 15. He acts. In verse 15, and making a whip of cords, there would have been a lot of cords around because they had to contain the animals.

They had to bind the animals and everything. There would have been cords all over the place. Jesus takes some of those cords and making a whip of those cords, he drove them all out of the temple with the sheep and oxen and he poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. See, we have the perfect anger of Jesus in action. And really our hearts and minds should go to Malachi 3, which we read earlier, I think Mr.

Wise Man read it for us, in which it talks about the Lord will suddenly appear and purify the worship of the temple. And our minds should automatically go there. He appears and his anger is enacted or it's focused on the action of doing away with the wickedness and establishing the righteousness instead. And this is what anger should do, by the way. It is good to be angry at sin.

It is good to want to act against sin. And then you need to use that anger to act against sin, not join in sin. And here we see Jesus with his perfect anger. He sees a great sin indeed, and he acts to end that sin. See, he acts and he doesn't just simply react to an anger. You got to imagine Jesus would have seen this for several years.

He had to go to the Passover in order to obey the law from the age of 12. He would have seen the marketplace in the temple every year. And you got to imagine, it's not like all of a sudden now he's like, now I'm angry. You got to imagine he was angry every year as he saw this, but he didn't react in that anger in a way that was not going to be helpful to the objective of glorifying God and establishing righteousness.

And so the year that his ministry starts is the year in which it is appropriate for him to reveal that anger and ending the marketplace in the temple. And he acts accordingly. Now this is just for extra. You see that word, how he threw the table over, the table of the money changers. That word table is specific for like banking table where money is exchanged.

It's like where money is exchanged. Think of a bank. and that's why in Acts 6 you remember the apostle says we shouldn't give up the preaching of God's word in order to serve tables they don't mean food and cleaning the tables off they mean banking they mean money they mean coordinating the money with the widows and so Jesus he comes and he overturns the tables as well so Jesus sees the problem he sees the sin he sees the wickedness he sees the encroachment of the marketplace in the temple and he takes perfect action he drives them out. Can you imagine the commotion that would have caused?

It would have been a lot going on there. Quite the commotion. And can you imagine the calm afterwards when they were all gone and the court of the Gentiles was again as it should be as an entryway into the worship of God. But next we get into the reason for this action. Look at verse 16. Look at the reason for it And he told those who sold the pigeons in verse 16 there take these things away and do not make my father house a house of trade There a reason for his action right there Nothing wrong with trade.

There's nothing wrong with making money. In fact, it's a godly pursuit if you do it in a godly way. Proverbs talks about the wickedness of the lazy man and the the righteousness of not being lazy and producing wealth. Or Deuteronomy 8.18, God talks about he's the one that provides wealth. There's nothing wrong with trade. There's nothing wrong with making a profit.

In fact, we think of Proverbs 31 with the Proverbs 31 woman. You ever notice a major aspect of her outward show of godliness is her ability to be active and to trade? There's nothing wrong with trade of itself, but there is something wrong with making the pursuit of money your God. And there is no more obvious indicator that this was going on right now in the fact that they were turning God's house into a house of trade.

And so this is blatant that they have made a false god of pursuing, of making money. It's literally right there. We are replacing the temple of the courts of the Gentiles and we're putting a marketplace there instead. It is a clear indication that they were making well, lucre, their God. And the other Gospels that talk about Jesus cleansing the temple, Jesus quotes from Isaiah 56.

He says, My house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of robbers. You see, that chapter of Isaiah is talking about the Gentile inclusion into the worship of God. and what Jesus is saying is you're turning the Gentile, the court of the Gentiles into a big marketplace instead of it being a house of prayer, of worship that even the Gentiles to some degree right now are welcome in as they anticipate the full reality later. You have made it a marketplace or he says a den of robbers and of course any good pursuit like trade turns into sin whenever we treat it like an idol and thus he calls it a den of robbers, of stealing, of making money at the expense of your neighbor.

Now this is speculation, but it's thought that you could bring animals in all you want to Jerusalem for the Passover, but the priest would almost always say, eh, not clean. Why? Well, you got to buy one of our animals. And so it's very well understood that it was a system of robbery to the people who were trying to worship God, to the Gentiles who were trying to peer in, and Jesus says this needs to go.

So the reason of his action, well, the place of worship to the true God has been replaced with an idol. By the way, this is always the intent of Satan, isn't it? Satan, since the beginning, has been trying to corrupt proper worship to God. This is what he does. He tries his best to corrupt worship in your own hearts, beloved. Do not think that the distractions that you feel that as you come into worship and you just start thinking of everything else, it's just something that happens to us.

It is a work of Satan to try to distract the people of God from the true worship. And so really the illustrations, okay, you don't like the euchre illustration and you don't like the open house illustration. Fine. I got another one in light of this more information. Imagine being in Jesus's shoes here, a July 4th party. I love July 4th, by the way.

I love this holiday so much. And imagine it's July 4th, 2002, and the July 4th party you're expecting, you know, the national anthem and patriotism and all that kind of stuff, you're excited. Imagine instead you have these pictures of bin Laden at the July 4th parade. Imagine you have ISIS being paraded around. Can you imagine that you came to celebrate America and instead the enemy has arrived and placed its flag instead?

Or if you're older than me, imagine the same thing, only the Soviets from the 50s to the 80s going to the July 4th party and you have the Soviet Union flag and you have communism being celebrated or the Nazis in the 40s. Imagine you're going to a place anticipating the celebration of your nation, and instead the enemy is there. This is what's going on.

Jesus arrives, ready to worship God, and instead Satan has placed a marketplace in the temple of God. And so his reasons are to take care or get rid of the defilement. Now let's look at the motivation in verse 17. look at the motivation of Jesus. In verse 17, his disciples remembered as this is happening, and he says these things. I mean, he probably, by the way, taught after he did this in the temple as well.

And his disciples are remembering as this is happening in verse 17, zeal for your house will consume me. That is the motivation of Jesus. This is quoting Psalm 69, 9. It's a Psalm of David. And if we think one thing about David is he had a great zealousness for the house of God. He wanted to build the house of God badly.

And the zeal for the house of God, the presence of God, consumed his very fiber of his being. It's what he thought about. It's what his desires were. And we see that Jesus is the fulfillment of that zealousness. That the zealousness of David for the house of God was fulfilled or completed. And the zealousness of Jesus that consumed his very soul. he desired the very house of God to the deepest of his being.

Zeal is an intense or excessive fervor or passion to accomplish something. Zeal is an intense or excessive passion to accomplish something. They had a zeal to make money. Jesus had a zeal for the house of God, the special presence of God on earth via grace. Jesus had a zeal for the very presence of God on earth. And so Jesus went to the Passover motivated to experience the presence of God and in righteous anger destroyed the idol that was impeding it.

Now that's the first layer. That's the first layer of that onion. And now as we move forward in John 2, the layer gets cut into the onion and all of a sudden those fumes come out and it starts to really grip our souls with fire. Now let's look at that. The second layer begins to open in verses 18 to 22 and it comes with the pushback of the Jewish leaders.

Look at verse 18. So the Jews said to him, what sign do you show us for doing these things? Can you imagine the audacity? The Pharisees had put their approval on this and here's this peasant coming in and acting crazy. And you can imagine they'd be like, what sign or what authority do you have to do this? You can imagine they would be beside themselves.

And this is what they're asking. Show us some kind of sign or reason why you have the authority to just kick out the marketplace, they wouldn't have said that, in the court of the Gentiles. If you think about it, it was a silly question. That's a really, if I use the word, if you don't like it, plug your ears, but that's a really stupid question. It's a foolish question driven by a heart of disbelief, is what it is. because the sign for him to do it was revealed in the fact that he did it.

Think about it for a moment. These people, they're gods. The idol that they set up is making money. And this peasant, with no army, no police, he had one weapon, and that was a whip, came in, and he terrified them. You try going and terrifying a group of men whose god is money, and you're stopping it from happening. It's not going to be an easy task, beloved.

It is not going to be an easy task. And this man just came in and made them run for their lives. If they had a heart of belief, they would have thought of Malachi 3, and they would have thought, who is this man who just made those people run for their lives? But instead, they cry out, what kind of sign do you prove that you have the authority to do this?

That was the sign. But Jesus responds here by peeling back the layer for us. He responds to that not by saying, that was the sign, silly. But he responds with peeling back the layer for us to behold the deeper meaning that's going on here that's going to pierce our own souls with that aroma of the onion. He responds, look at verse 19 through 21. He responds by saying, answering them, Destroy this temple and in three days I raise it up And the Jews then said It has taken 46 years to build this temple and will you raise it up three days They confused What are you talking about You're going to destroy this temple and raise it in three days?

This was a magnificent temple that was being built. It was Herod's temple that he built for his own glory, and it had taken several decades to get where they're at now, and it would take several decades for it to be completed, by the way, as a side note, and then five, six, seven years later, Jesus comes with the Romans and destroys it. But nevertheless, this is a temple that's in the process of being built still.

They're saying it's taken 40 some odd years to do this, and you're going to build it back up in three days? What are you talking about? But then John, being very kind, he gives us teaching about the layer that Jesus just peeled off. He says in verse 21, but he was speaking about the temple of his body. okay so instead of the confusion of he's not talking about the physical temple around him he's talking about his own body as a temple and he's saying it'll get destroyed and be raised back up after death raised back up three days later the authority now let's connect the dots here the authority that jesus has to clear the temple is the whole physical temple pointed to who he was and was fulfilled in him.

So the man who just did this is the one that this whole thing is all about. That's where the authority comes from. Destroy this temple and he'll be raised back up. He's saying, I am the temple. This is all for me. This is all revealing me.

That's the authority. John 1 14, right? Remember John says, and the word became flesh and tabernacled among us. this adds to our understanding of the anger of Jesus when he looked around at the false worship at the false idol that was built up and he says this does not look like me at all Jesus had pure motivations in worshiping God no false motivation at all and yet here this temple that was supposed to reflect him had false worship going on and he saw the court of the Gentiles being erased for the sake of of lucre and he says it is my will that all the world would come and worship the true god not cut them out so jesus came to the temple and witnessed people telling lies of who he was it was all for him and he had every authority to go in and stop the lies you know it's like imagine for a second that you just you know lost a ton of weight and you're excited about it you're excited about it.

And, you know, it's an exciting thing. And then every single time you want to look in the mirror, someone just puts a photo of before you lost weight. You'd be like, that's not, that's not, that's not the right image. That's not, that's not it anymore, right? And stop doing that. That's not the right image.

And here Jesus is saying, this is not the right image of me at all. This isn't appropriate. This isn't right at all. And he acts in anger to finish it and to end it. He is the temple of God But there more to this deeper layer here isn there Jesus did not remain as a temple on the earth the temple was destroyed his body he died he rose again three days later as he says here and he went back to be with the father and then he destroyed that physical temple through the romans in 70 a.d and established that doesn't mean the temple left no more temple on earth, but he established his temple, he established his church as a temple of God on earth.

And that's how it remains today. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 3.16, do you not know that you are God's temple and that God's spirit dwells in you? So do you see how that layer is being peeled and all of a sudden you realize that this motivation, zealousness for purity, this reason to take away any impurity that would invade the temple all of a sudden goes through the perfect temple of Christ and his death and resurrection and flows to you, beloved.

See, Jesus' reason for purging the temple was to destroy the idols. And his motivation for purging the temple was zealousness for the proper dwelling place of God on earth, perfect righteousness through grace. And that did not go away when he left earth, but rather was established at the right hand of the Father, directed at you, who are believers right now.

But it's not as though you, believer, I'm talking to believers right now, are on the other side of the whip of Jesus. He's not chasing you off, terrifying you, but he has given you the Holy Spirit to chase off all idols and sin in your temple. And so we see here the greater reality here is that he's made you the temple. And he's not making you run off scared, but instead he's given you the whip, and he says, chase off all unhealthiness, all taint that is in your temple by the work that I've done, by the spirit of grace.

And he calls on you to join in that purging that we see here. So you can join in the same reason right now. You know that. The same reason as Jesus, as we see in this text. The same reason, the same motivation to expel all sin from yourself, for he has done the work for you to do so. This is for you, beloved, who, like the disciples, you remember this teaching and you believe the words of Jesus and the scriptures.

But there are those who do not believe and instead have created false temples and false worship. There are those of you even here in this room that have not believed upon Jesus and you have false idols within your very members. False idols of wealth and sex and passions of the flesh. Jesus chasing off the vendors is a taste of what he will do when he returns to judge all people.

You know that. With fire in his eyes, he will gather out all of his kingdom, all causes of sin and lawbreakers And it will be a terrifying experience for those who have not been cleansed by Christ You will flee in that day like those men fled in that day And in that day the only thing you will desire is for the rocks to fall on you to hide you from the Son of Man's terrifying glance. So we need to understand the first layer here.

Jesus, motivated with intense zeal for God and his dwelling place, to purge the wickedness from the temple. But as the first layer is peeled back, it begins to burn and sting our own souls. As we realize Jesus has the same zeal and reason for you to purge your wickedness from you and has given you everything you need by his death and resurrection to chase off all practice of defilement.

But it tastes all the better. Yeah, I know it burns, right? That doesn't feel good. It's like the onion being cut, and it's a potent onion, and it's burning you. But it tastes all the better as you realize you are not the enemy he chases away in wrath. But by grace causes you to join him with the same reason that he had the same motivation.

And with his spirit, he puts the whip in your hand, and he says, go to work, my beloved. Let us pray. Oh, Father, thank you for the work of Jesus Christ, our Lord. Lord, I thank you that we can see his great passion to end sin, to end wickedness, to put an end to it. We see this in the way that he drove out the marketplace that was in the temple. But we see that same reason, that same motivation as he clears out wickedness from our own souls.

Lord, what a great God you are to enable us by this great spirit to work against sin in our lives. Oh God, I ask that you would help the people of Christ to not work as if it's our own power, as if we can muster up from our own abilities, but help us, Lord, to look to Jesus who truly was the temple, who died and rose again three days later so that we might have new life. and Lord would you even reveal this truth to the unbelievers that are before me the ones who are not following Jesus the one when he returns will instead run away terrified at his wrath would you cause them to even see that their only hope is to be purged by Jesus now in this life by his grace and mercy would you cause them to turn from their sins and believe upon him for that mercy and to chase off the idols of their lives and to enjoy the life that's found in Christ. We thank you for this gospel of John.

It truly is, has a purpose for us to look to the Son of God, to believe upon him as Messiah and have life. And so we thank you that that life includes the purging away of all wickedness that's found within our temple. Thank you for this great work of Jesus Christ our Lord. May he be glorified now and always into eternity for his love for his people. In Jesus' name, amen.